Customer Reviews

Loose Balls : Easy Money, Hard Fouls, Cheap Laughs & True Love in the NBA

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Coming from someone who knows Jayson very well, this book is all he said it was going to be! I've heard these stories a thousand times....and each time they get better! I didn't think I would react the same way to the stories beacuse his delivery is so unique, but I was wrong. I laughed just as hard as I did when I heard them the first time. I did worry a bit because I knew I was going to be in the book, but I even had to laugh at myself. This book is a must-read for sports fans of all kinds!

If you live in New York or New Jersey, you know someone who knows Jayson Williams. You've heard a good Jayson story- you saw him speeding down Route 78 or in a restaurant somewhere. Well, if you're the one guy who somehow hasn't met Jay, read Loose Balls, and you'll know a suprising amount about him.

He is the funniest man I have ever met. He makes people around him feel like they're tight. He loves kids, even your kids. And he tells some of the best damn stories about sports and athletes and people you'll ever hear. Not all are laugh-out-loud funny. Some are just modest smile inducers. Some are wet your pants funny.

You can read it in an afternoon, or over a few days. Jump from vignette to vignette (you can't really call them "chapters") in no particular order, and enjoy a tour through the life of a ten million dollar man who is more down to earth than the guy who reads your electric meter. Sure, the book would have benefitted from a smooth, glitzy editing job-- but that's not Jayson. This is. It's not world peace or a cure for cancer (though proceeds from the book go to a Parkinson's foundation--his Mom has the disease). Smile a little and rest easy with the knowledge that there is at least one athlete who smiles, laughs and cries with the rest of us.

I have read over 200 books in the last 2 years and Loose Balls is the funniest, warmest, and most exciting book I've read in a long, long time! Jayson Williams makes this book easy to read by making this book into little stories through out the book. Plus it's for a great cause! He is donating all the money he makes from this book to a charity reguarding Parkconsin's disease. This is definenitly a must own! Please, you won't be disappointed!

This is a great read from one of the classiest guys in the NBA. He is brutally honest about himself and everyone in the NBA (the further you read, the more you'll discover just how disturbing an individual Armen Gilliam is). In true Jayson Williams fashion, all his proceeds from the book go to charity. This is entertaining all the way through, nearly impossible to put down...sports fans and non-sports fans alike will enjoy this one.

I stumbled across Loose Balls while browsing through a bookstore this past weekend. Jayson had just appeared on Imus and Letterman and was both funny and charming. I had some time, so I curled up in a big leather chair to flip through the book. I never expected to either laugh out loud or weep in that chair. Yet, I found myself doing both. Jayson's humanity, generosity, kindness, spirit and wit are revealed in this compilation of both genuinely funny and sincerely heartfelt stories about his life, his family, his friends, the NBA and human nature. All the proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to research for Parkinson's disease. It is encouraging to know that there are still some good people among us.

Let me say this from the start: Jayson Williams is not a professional writer. What he was (until recently, when he retired) was one of the funniest, most original, always count on him for a great quote, basketball players around. This book features the humor and opinions that have made him so famous, but there's a lot more. You also learn about his background: growing up a biracial kid in Queens, the death of his 2 sisters from AIDS and the paranoia that is still with him, his wild earlier days in college, Phoenix, and Philadelphia, the mistakes he made, and how he learned from them.

This is a great mix of the difficult life of a young NBA star and a very funny look at today's NBA. A must read for any basketball fan.

this book is fun to read. williams does a great job giving readers some insight on life in the NBA. he tells many humorous stories about players in the league, names name's, and calls it as he sees it.

this is not so much a book however, as a collection of a bunch of 3 paragraph stories. you almost get the feeling that williams spoke into a recorder about the NBA for several hours, someone took the tape and hammered it out verbatim as a book. this is not necessarily a bad thing unless the reader is expecting some astute or articulate view of the internal goings on in the NBA.

the only thing that nagged me was on several instances williams refers to michael jordan as "black jesus". this does not upset me on a religious ground, and i am a jordan fan, however, i found this just shy of sickening. he compliments many other NBA stars throughout the book but whenever jordan's name is mentioned, it seems to be laid on a bit thicker. it was almost as if williams was looking to place himself in jordan's good graces.

williams is definitely an impressive guy that deserves the success that his career and this book have received.

Jayson Williams is one of most comedic and genuine personalities in all of professional sports. He, along, with Charles Barkely, are experts at both rebounding and scoring as well as interviewing and clowning. At many stages of the book I found myself laughing out loud and will easily remember some of the outlandish events contained within the pages. Only one characteristic of the book restrained me from conveying the rating of 5 stars. After reading the Gentleman's Quarterly article (the funniest article that I have EVER read) which shared many of the same stories as the book, I expected more of the same. Instead, Loose Balls was more the PG-13 version of the article, and apparently some of the humor was lost in the translation. To me, a common trait to sports is the presentation of attitude, and, associated with it, the use of explicatives. The lack of these within the pages of the book made it somewhat less real, less genuine. To another athlete, the difference would be negligible, but to Jayson Williams, who is one of the most genuine personalities in all of professional sports, it makes all the difference.

This book starts off well then goes down hill, crashes and burns! Jayson begins with a few funny stories and you begin to believe he is not just another dumb professional athelete. Unfortunately, he veers away from humorous stories and relates embarrassing, humiliating stories about his co-workers and incredibly his own family. Jayson does not know the difference between "honesty" and just plain poor social etiquette or good judgement calls. I was embarrassed for him when he retold incidents which illustrated how ignorant and unsophisticated his own father is. Many of his own stories are vivid proof of his own immaturity, prejudice, and distorted priorities. This book perpetuates every ugly stereotype of the big dumb black athelete who attends college on a basketball scholarship graduates with a degree, yet is unable to use correct grammer and managed to get through four years of University and worldwide travel without attaining class or social acuity. He abuses alcohol, lacks respect for women (they are all the same with the lights off), contridicts his own statements, and proves with his own discription that he is self-centered, selfish, greedy, childish, lacking sophistication, polish, social etiquette and finesse.

I saw this book and knew I had to read it. This guy is hilarious. It's like going to bar-b-que and talking to funniest guy there over beers. The book is fast paced, fun, interesting and moving. Even if you don't like basketball, you will be delightfully entertained.